


Decency

by orphan_account



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-01
Updated: 2007-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:30:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jayne Cobb was not a decent man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decency

  
Jayne Cobb was not a decent man. He wasn't nice and he wasn't cuddly and he didn't fall in love. He was a violent man. He killed when he had to, without any scruples, and he had spent most of his life in pursuit of money.

He lived his life, sent money to his kin, spent time with his friends and treated women right. He was smarter than Simon gave him credit for, and he was protective of the crew on Serenity, even if it was mostly for the money. When the shit hit the fan on Miranda, he was there with the rest of them getting the message out.

Jayne Cobb was not a decent man.

He was in his bunk, staring up at the pictures of Mandy and Nanci and Candy with just a hint of desperation behind his eyes. Improbably large breasts, hard nipples, scanty underwear and long blonde hair did nothing for him. Nonetheless, he raked his eyes over Nanci's bare body, hand tight around his cock as he tried to ignore the memory of River Tam, holding a bloody axe and standing knock-kneed in a room strewn with lifeless Reavers.

Light diffused around her body, sweat clinging to her brow and shining on her neck and her collarbone, darkening the thin material of her blood-stained dress. She was tense, waiting and ready for the next challenge. Their eyes met. Jayne groaned and bucked against his own hand as he came.

After a few breathless moments he sat up, and cleaned up the mess he had made. _Aw, fuck._

He needed this about as much as he needed a bullet in the brainpan.

...

She was so _young_. It felt all kinds of wrong to be getting hot about her. Jayne tried not to watch River as she drifted around the mess, instead focusing on sharpening his knife.

She sat down across from him and his guts twisted. He frowned at Binky, spat to get rid of the foul taste in his mouth. River didn't seem to notice that he was all worked up. He didn't dare look up to check. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, watched the slight repetitive movements her arm made as she ate her protein mash.

She slurped her drink, loudly, and Jayne bit his tongue.

He wished that she would just finish up and leave, that she would go do piloty stuff, or that Mal would come and tell him to move something heavy. He wondered if the latrine needed cleaning.

Anything would be better than _this_ , sitting lusting after a twelve-year-old slip of nothing. Jayne wasn't a decent man, but he wasn't sick.

She _was_ sick. That made it even worse, he wanted a crazy girl. He wondered if she would see how wrong it was. She was too shaky, too young, too easy to manipulate.

She suddenly stopped eating.

 _Fuck_. She was a ruttin' reader, too.

Jayne got out of the mess as quickly as he could.

...

River pretty much ignored his existence, but that didn't make it any easier on Jayne. He would catch himself looking at her legs when she danced around the cargo bay, eyeing her ass when she flopped down onto the table one night before dinner. Mal told him to get her off of the table.

Jayne had groaned and complained more with sincerity than usual, but in the end he did what Mal ordered. He tried to drag her off of the table by her wrists, but she hooked her bare feet around the other end, and he ended up wrestling her off the table, holding her up in the air in an awkward cat's cradle, her face pressed into his shoulder and her spindly wrists burning in his hands while the ass that he'd been ogling two minutes earlier rested firmly on his right arm. She glared at him when he dumped her unceremoniously on one of the soft chairs, and fled the mess.

Everyone but River got food poisoning that night. Looked like she'd been right to skip dinner.

They had a job to do the next day, and Jayne sat uneasily beside Little Crazy in the new mule. _I'm a show her good an' all I got man parts_. Jayne felt ill as his earlier threat drifted through his mind, and put it down to the food poisoning. Everyone was still a little delicate. God, he'd never meant it then, but _now_... he snuck a glance at River, who was curled into a ball next to him, wearing those ridiculous goggles. He couldn't tell if she was looking at him or not.

He wondered briefly if she would let him show her a good time, and forcibly pushed the thought out of his mind.

He needed to shoot people. Then he needed some trim. Then he needed a preacher.

He risked another glance at the girl. Spindly arms, legs drowning in combat boots, shapeless sack of a dress over a flat chest-- well, not entirely flat-- when'd _that_ get attractive?

She smiled at him. He hoped he'd be able to shoot lots of people on this job.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally published on LJ, under the name 'lacesforalady'; that's still me!


End file.
